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Still it is curious that, amongst the natives of Northern Africa, who lay hold of the Cerastes without fear or hesitation, impunity is ascribed to the use of a plant with the juice of which they anoint themselves before touching the reptile ; and Bruce says of the people of Sennar, that they acquire exemption from the fatal consequences of the bite by chewing a particular root, and washing themselves with an infusion of certain plants.
'The man has a horned viper, cerastes is the name under which you gentlemen of science know it, and it is the most deadly of all Egyptian snakes. It is commonly known as Cleopatra's Asp, for that is the serpent which was brought in a basket of figs to the paramour of Caesar in order that she might not endure the triumph of Augustus. 'What are you going to do? asked Susie.
About this time it was that Philip, king of Macedon, was treacherously assaulted and slain at Egae by Pausanias, the son of Cerastes, who was derived from the family of Oreste, and his son Alexander succeeded him in the kingdom; who, passing over the Hellespont, overcame the generals of Darius's army in a battle fought at Granicum.
"Judge his anguish then, and my disappointment, when, seven days before her twenty-first birthday, she was bitten by a cerastes, and her body died. Had she been near her home, her knowledge would have defied the powers of this most deadly serpent's bite; for she knew antidotes for every poison.
It has two long and thin excrescences above the eyes, whereto the name of "horns" has been given: they stand erect, leaning a little backwards; no naturalist has as yet discovered their use. The cerastes is of a very pale brown color, and is spotted with large, unequal, and irregularly-placed spots.
The Subhanyo, a kind of whipsnake, and a large yellow rock snake called Got, are little feared. Serpents are in Somali-land the subject of many superstitions. One horn of the Cerastes, for instance, contains a deadly poison: the other, pounded and drawn across the eye, makes man a seer and reveals to him the treasures of the earth.
But Lucan goes a little too far in his account of Cato's expedition into these parts; this veracious historian has inserted a few pages of sublime serpent nonsense, exquisite fooling.... Of all the deadly worms that breed in these wildernesses the most formidable, because the most sluggish, is the two-horned nocturnal cerastes, the "pretty worm of Nilus."
Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas.
Calmet enumerates eleven kinds of serpents as known to the Hebrews, the names of which are as follow: Ephe, the viper. 2. Chephir, a sort of aspic. 3. Acshub, the aspic. 4. Pethen, a similar reptile. 5. Tzeboa, speckled serpent. 6. Tzimmaon. 7. Tzepho, or Tzephoni, a basilisk. 8. Kippos, the acontias. 9. Shephiphon, the cerastes. 10. Shachal, the black serpent. 11. Saraph, a flying-serpent.
Why should not the graceful and deadly cobra, the horrid cerastes, the huge throttling python, and even more, the loathly puff-adder, undistinguishable from the gravel among which he lay coiled, till he leaped furiously and unswerving, as if shot from a bow, upon his prey why should not they too be kindred to that evil power who had been, in the holiest and most ancient books, personified by the name of the Serpent?
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